


Even the Nights Are Better

by mldrgrl



Series: Adventures of The Lady Detective and The Writer [6]
Category: Californication (TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:30:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8917420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Stella comes to a turning point one night.  Set a month after The Last Temptation of The Lady Detective





	

For the first time in her life, Stella had no idea what she was doing.  Professionally, she was progressing on the track she had always envisioned for herself, onward and upward.  Personally, she was a fish out of water.  It was unsettling and she definitely didn’t like feeling unsettled.  

 

Never had she ever had to think of anyone but herself.  Certainly, it might sound selfish or uncaring, but she liked not having to worry about someone else’s feelings.  Life was less complicated that way.

 

It was her own fault, really.  Things never had to progress past that one night, but she had gone looking for him in LA and opened the door.  Two years later, she finds herself in the very surreal, very strange position of living with this man.  Or maybe they aren’t living together.  She’s not really sure.  It’s very unsettling.

 

A realization hit her one night as she was getting ready for bed.  She was brushing her teeth, leaning over the sink, when Hank came up behind her, snaked an arm around her waist and lifted her hair up to kiss the back of her neck.  With that, he slipped away as softly as he came in, and she was left holding her toothbrush and staring down at the running water.

 

 _I am in a relationship_ , she thought to herself.   _These are the things people in relationships do._

 

She rinsed her mouth and her toothbrush and turned out the light.  Hank was already in bed with a book.  She put her hands on her hips and looked down at her tank top and flannel pants and thought again, _I am in a relationship_.

 

“Hank,” she said.

 

“Mmhm,” he answered.

 

“What are we doing?”

 

“Well, I am engaged in a novel from a first time author which I was hoping to find insufferably pedantic, pretentious, and trite, but much to my dismay is so brilliant I feel the overwhelming need to find the man and punch him in his pretty, bestselling face.”  He paused and flipped the book around to show Stella the back cover photo page.  “I mean, honestly.  Where does he get off being a genius _and_ devastatingly handsome?  That’s what I’m here for.”

 

He tossed the book aside and pushed the covers away to crawl over to the side of the bed towards her.  “And you,” he said, sliding his finger behind the drawstring knot at the top of her pants.  “You are standing there looking delicious yet somewhat indignant, certainly not in a ‘shut up and fuck me, Hank,’ mood and whatever I did I’m so, so sorry and shall I kiss it better or did you have something else in mind?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He let go of the drawstring on her pants and stretched out on his side, looking up at her with his head propped in his hand.  “All right.”

 

He waited for her to say something and she waited to find the words for what she wanted to say and so they both waited in a silent stalemate.

 

“Is this a mind reading game we’re playing?” he asked.

 

“I would like you to tell me what we’re doing.”  She took one hand off her hip and waved it between them for a moment.  “What _is_ this that we’re doing?  You’ve been here for a month.  Do you live here?”

 

Hank pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed and reached for Stella’s waist, dragging her forward to step between his knees.  He casually linked his hands at the small of her back and she crossed her arms over her chest.

 

“Would you like me to leave, Sherlock?” he asked.

 

“No.”

 

He placed a kiss on the top of her crossed arms and then rested his chin on them and looked up at her, smiling.   _Dammit, we are in a relationship_ , she thought.  She dropped her arms, but still he looked up at her with his infuriatingly charming grin.  Sighing, she pushed her hands through his hair and moved out of his hold.

 

“Let’s just go to bed,” she said.

 

Hank stood and walked back around to his side of the bed.   _He has a fucking side of the bed,_ her mind screamed _.  How did this happen?_

 

Stella slipped into bed and leaned over to snap the lamp off on her bedside table.  She felt Hank move up behind her and he squeezed her upper arm while touching his lips to the back of her shoulder.  She closed her eyes and shifted to get more comfortable and ended up with her back pressing lightly against his chest as he slipped his arm over her waist.  She’d never been much of a fan of ‘spooning’ with a lover before, but Hank was, and it was something she was gradually finding more acceptable and even enjoyable.

 

It was quiet for awhile, though neither was on the verge of sleep.  Hank toyed with the drawstring of her pants and occasionally brushed his nose and mouth against her shoulder.  She covered his hand and ran the tip of her middle finger back and forth over his knuckles until the silence and stillness was suddenly broken.

 

“I love you,” Hank said.

 

Quick as a flash, Stella snapped the lamp back on, squinting as she pushed herself up and out from under Hank’s arm.  She pressed herself against her headboard and leaned as far away from him as she could.  Hank moved up on his elbow and laid his arm over her thighs to hold onto her hip.  He looked surprised.

 

“Why would you say that?” she asked.

 

“Because I do, and I wanted to tell you.”

 

“You can’t just blurt something like that out in the dark.”

 

“Oh, I’m pretty sure ‘I love you’ is at the top of the list of most blurted out in the dark, along with ‘oh, God,’ and ‘don’t stop.’”

 

Stella stumbled out of bed and held her hand up when Hank tried to move after her.  “Stay there,” she said, using the most commanding voice she could muster.  “Just...stay there.”  Her robe was on the hook on the open bathroom door behind her and while keeping her palm up to hold Hank at bay, she fumbled blindly for it.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Downstairs.  Do not follow me.”  She freed her robe and pulled it on, backing out of the room as Hank stared at her.

 

She stood in the middle of the front room, in the dark, listening to the sound of her harsh breath and trying to ignore unrelenting thudding of her heart against her chest.  This was not her.  She didn’t run from situations, she ran towards them.  It wasn’t the first time a man had told her he’d loved her, but it was the first time she wanted to say it back.  Oddly, it had even been on the tip of her tongue, but she hadn’t realized it until he’d said it first.  She had thought it, just as he’d said it.

 

Who was this person she had become?  This is why she had avoided relationships.  She was capable and independent and strong and fearless, except for this one thing that terrified her.  All other things, she could handle, but not this.  She’d spent her life successfully avoiding this kind of entanglement.  Sure, she’d had messy affairs, but the pain of separation was never on her side.  She would not get attached.  She could want someone, but she couldn’t need them.  She could like someone, but she couldn’t love them.  Hank would have to go back to New York and she would have to forget about him.

 

Intending to put an end to this madness before it went any further, she went back upstairs and into the bedroom.  Hank was sitting on the side of the bed, reclined with his arms behind him, waiting.  She opened her mouth and this time he raised his hand and stopped her.

 

“Shut up, Sherlock,” he said, and gave a jerk of his head to the side.  “Get over here.”

 

Mutely, she obeyed, even though it went against her nature to take orders.  She went willingly, without hesitating, because she wanted to.  When she was close enough, he closed his hands on her hips and yanked her forward.  He wrapped one arm around her, low, across her ass, and slid one hand under her tank top to cover her breast and give her a squeeze.  That was all it took for her body to soften and open and grow wet in anticipation.

 

“You don’t love me,” she said.  “You just love fucking me.”

 

“Au contraire,” he answered, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.  “I love you and I _also_ love fucking you.”

 

“I’m incapable of commitment.”

 

“Neither of us are fucking other people.  That’s commitment.”

 

“I could be.”

 

“You could be, but you’re not.  And you won’t.”

 

“How do you know I won’t?”

 

“Because I’m going to trust you.”

 

Hank slid his arm back and with splayed fingers, squeezed and rubbed one of her ass cheeks.  His fingers slipped into the crevice between her legs and unconsciously, she rolled her hips back and arched forward.  The hand under her shirt moved to the middle of her chest and he stroked her from belly to sternum several times.  

 

“I am willful and I am stubborn,” she said.

 

“Mmhm.”  He bent his head and kissed the slope of her ribs, down to her hip.

 

“I won’t need you like you want me to.”

 

“What is it that you think I want you to need me for?” he asked, the back of his fingers dipping into the waistband of her pants and plucking lightly at the edge of her panties just above her pubic bone.  He pulled on the opposite side of her waistband, exposing the upper swell of her ass for his mouth and tongue.

 

Her mind was a blank.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I think you want me to be someone I’m not.”

 

“I want you to be Stella.  My willful, stubborn, brilliant, gorgeous, difficult, single-minded, over-analytical, lovely, sexy, larger-than-life, tiny lady detective.”

 

Stella locked her knees to prevent them from giving out as Hank slipped his hand deep into panties and turned his fingers through her slick folds.  He murmured his words through kisses down her thigh, dragging her pants down ahead of his mouth.  She put her hands on his shoulders and he turned his face up to her as he slid two fingers up inside of her.

 

“I’m not a character in one of your novels,” she panted and bit her lip as he curved into her and her body betrayed her by pressing for more.  “You can’t reduce me to adjectives.”

 

“You’re cute when you run out of arguments.”

 

“I’ve never loved anyone before,” she admitted, aware that she had failed miserably in this last ditch effort to persuade him that he was not to be troubled with her.

 

“Never?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, this will be fun.”  He withdrew his fingers from her and she stuttered his name and made a grab for his arm.  He was quicker than her and clasped both her hands and brought them behind her back as he stood and loomed over her.  She knew of at least ten different ways to break his fingers or his nose and get out of his hold, but she stayed, digging her nails into his palms.

 

“I’m not going to shut up and fuck you tonight,” he said.  “What I am going to do is make love to you.  And you don’t get to be in charge of it.”

 

That was the thing she hated and loved about him most.  He never just accepted her control of him as a matter of fact and always needed to find a way to assert his dominance.  Why did he insist on challenging her like this?  ‘Submissive’ was not in her vocabulary.

 

As though uncertain of how she would react, Hank slowly eased his hold on her hands and it dawned on her that she would always have power over him in this way.  He could tell her what to do or what not to do, but he would always be uncertain if she’d comply.  For that reason, she kept her hands behind her back and she could see the pleasant surprise in his face.

 

He pushed the robe off her shoulders and she slackened her arms so that it fell to the floor.  He grasped the hemline of her tanktop with both hands and she raised her arms for him as he drew it up her sides.  Her pants were already at her ankles and all she had to do was shuffle her feet to kick them away.  His hands moved inside her underwear again down her backside, squeezing and pulling her up to her tiptoes against his chest.  He turned them both in a half circle and then pushed his knee up between her legs and pressed it to the mattress.  He lifted her up against his leg and then crawled forward and laid her down across the width of the bed.  Her head hung off over the side by just a few inches.

 

She watched him crawl backwards away from her, only to slide her panties off her legs.  Before he crawled back up she caught a glimpse of his erection tenting the front of his black boxer-briefs and it made her mouth water and her fingers twitch and her pelvis pulse and _ache_.  

 

He pushed her thighs apart and she sighed, grateful.  The gratitude was short-lived, because it was only to settle his torso between her legs and take her breast in his mouth.  She should’ve known better.  Once a breast man, always a breast man.  It’s not that she never found it stimulating, but once she was already aroused, it did her no good.  She lifted her arms up and placed the heels of her hands at her temples, fingers curled down so they scratched her hair.  If he was going to insist on paying homage to her breasts, the least she could do was make them a little higher and a little firmer.

 

Hank lifted his head after awhile and reached up to bring one of her hands down with his.  He put it over her breast, spreading her fingers out under his and then dipped his head again.  His tongue traveled through the gap between the side of her finger and the peak of her nipple and it was oddly erotic.  It didn’t do much in the way of stimulus, but it gave her the intoxicating feeling of command.  She pushed her hand up into her breast and it brought her nipple closer to his mouth.  He moaned happily and managed to catch both the tip of her thumb and her nipple with his teeth, which did send a jolt of arousal down her belly.

 

It must have worked for Hank too, because although he still squeezed her hand over her breast, his mouth traveled lower, sloppy and wet, down to her navel.   _Yes_ , she thought.   _God, yes_.  But, he bypassed the mark completely and slid backwards out of the warmth of her legs and sat back on his heels.  He brought his hands under the backs of her calves and bent her knees up, planting her feet on either side of his legs.  He reached for one of her ankles and brought her foot up to rest against his chest.

 

“What are you doing?” she breathed.

 

He pressed his thumbs up into the arch of her foot and back.  “Giving you a foot massage,” he answered.

 

“Fuck you,” she groaned, curling her toes in appreciation.  She could never resist a good foot massage, even if it prolonged the agony of much needed release.

 

The sonofabitch must’ve known something she didn’t because the way he manipulated her foot and the way he leaned against her heel and pushed against her leg makes her even wetter.  By the time he switched from one foot to the other, she found herself moaning in frustration and on the verge of begging for his mouth or his fingers or his cock.  If he didn’t touch her, she was going to touch herself.

 

“I need to know something,” he said, lowering her foot back to the bed.

 

“Mm yes, what?” she asked, quickly.

 

He placed his hands on her knees and traced small circles on the inside fold of skin where they were bent.  She had to fight very hard not to grab his head and shove it between her thighs.  He leaned over and pressed his fists next to her shoulders, bending his head down to hers.  Her eyes fluttered shut in anticipation of his kiss.

 

“Who gave you the right to be so fucking sexy?” he asked.

 

“Shut up,” she whispered, tiling her head in hopes of catching his lips.

 

“Make me.”

 

She wrapped her arms around his neck, suddenly desperate for his kiss.  He kissed her first with a closed mouth, very chastely, grinning when she pulled his ears in annoyance.  He kissed her a second time, opening her lips with his, but moving his head back when she tried to find his tongue.  She whimpered in protest and clenched his hair in her fists.  Finally, he really kissed her and her eyes slid shut with a sigh.  She’d always liked the way his tongue felt in her mouth and the way his bottom lip slid wetly over hers.  

 

She wanted him to sink his weight onto her as he’d never done before, to stretch her thighs apart, to make her breathless.   _Crush me_ , she thought.  

 

Her legs wound around his hips and her hips undulated beneath him.  Try as she might, he was just out of reach for her.  As her hips rolled, she managed to lightly graze the tip of his penis, straining against his cotton shorts, exactly at her entrance.  He groaned and thrust his hips forward, bringing the full length of him against her.  

 

“Please,” she whispered, clutching him against her with her arm around his shoulder as she reached between them and rubbed him firmly.  His shorts were wet, but she didn’t know if that was from him or from her.

 

“Stella,” he moaned.

 

“Please,” she said again.

 

He pushed himself up and removed her hand from his member.  One-handed, he pushed his underwear down past his ass and then held one of her knees down against the bed as he leaned against the other.

 

“I want you to watch us,” he said.  “I want to see your face as you watch us.”

 

“Yes.”  She would have agreed to just about anything to get him inside her as quick as possible.

 

It happened agonizingly slowly.  She watched him ease himself inside her at a snail’s pace.  If her lashes lowered even a fraction, he would stop and start to pull out.  By the time he was buried to the hilt, her heart was beating like she’d run a marathon and her chest was slick with sweat.  

 

“Now, look at me,” he said, quietly.

 

She raised her eyes to his and bit her lip.  She had no problem meeting a lover’s eye, but rarely could they hold her gaze.  She used her stare to her advantage, making things uncomfortable to spurn them on.  After all, they were mostly only there for immediate satisfaction and nothing more.  When she looked into Hank’s eyes, he looked back, and it was she who wanted to look away.

 

“I love you,” he said.

 

She felt a tear slide out of her eye and roll across her temple, but she didn’t look away.  He kissed her softly and then moved in and out of her in the slow, easy pace that he so often liked to torture her with.  Only this time it didn’t feel like torture.  It felt exquisite.  She had all sorts of sex with all sorts of people, but nothing ever felt like this.  Like she’d been penetrated so deeply right down to her soul.

 

She came quietly, twice, in quick succession, and as a surprise.  Her thighs and abdomen quivered and quaked while Hank kept up his languid thrusts.  What it lacked in intensity, it made up for in a different kind of release.  Tears trickled freely into her hair, though she wasn’t really crying.  She just felt overwhelmed and it happened to be how her body responded.

 

She put her hands on Hank’s sides, holding him lightly just above his hips where his skin was always warm and soft and felt like it was made for her hands to hold him.  She gave him a soft pull so that his body was closer and she could lift her head and kiss his chest.  She settled back down and moved her hands lower to grip his ass.  She loved how firm and smooth his skin was.  She loved how she could feel the clenching of his muscles as he thrust into her.  She loved how she could urge him faster with just the right press of her thumbs and pull with her arms.

 

She could feel him getting close.  Felt him tighten and swell and he groaned into her shoulder.  She arched her back for him so that her hips tilted down and her breasts grazed his chest.  He groaned again and the force of his final thrust knocked the arch out of her back.  He sank down onto her and she wrapped him in arms and legs, welcoming it.

 

Moments later, he rolled away from her and they both lay panting, staring up at the ceiling.  She was cold without him and she groped for the sheet, pulling it awkwardly over her since she was still lying the wrong way across the bed.  Hank rolled back over though and threw his arm and leg over her and she was warm again.

 

“Hank,” she said, quietly, twisting her restless fingers together and apart.

 

“You don’t have to say anything, Sherlock.”

 

“I sleep better when you’re beside me.”

 

He picked up one of her hands and stilled her nervous fingers by lacing the with his.

 

“I never used to sleep through the night,” she continued.  “Not at all.  I had...dreams.  And I had to wake up because I needed to know what they meant.  And then I didn’t sleep.”

 

She moved her eyes sideways to glance at him.  He was looking at their hands, flexing and curling his fingers while running his thumb up and down alongside hers.

 

“And I like coming home knowing you’ll be here,” she said.  “I resisted having a home for so long because I knew it would be empty.”

 

Hank rested his chin on her shoulder and she turned her head slightly towards him.  She wanted to be able to say the words to him, but they died on the vine.  She crossed her arm across her body and touched her fingertips to his jaw.

 

“We should get cleaned up,” he murmured, pulling her up with him as he sat up.  “If there’s anything else you want to say, you can tell me in the dark.”

 

The End

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [甚至夜晚更好](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448862) by [amamitouko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amamitouko/pseuds/amamitouko)




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